Welcome Steve, we hope you get some useful tips from the folks around here.Personally, I am not particularly familiar with Bridge cameras but all gear has pros and cons and is built to a price point. Because you have a bridge camera with fixed lens, jumping from brand to brand is not a problem if you find something from another manufacturer that suits you better.Should you decide to step into the interchangeable lens camera market, then you need to do your homework and choose a brand as most lenses from one manufacturer will not easily fit other brands.now to your question:-In zoom, you need to read carefully the claims as there is optical zoom and digital zoom. Optical zoom is provided by the lens and digital zoom is electronic "trickery". Make sure that you are comparing like for like. Digital zoom will never equal optical zoom......john